Sinead Keegan

Despite the fact that London has been damp, chilly and miserable for almost two weeks and my feet are little blocks of ice even with big socks and rubber soled slippers nothing can dampen my spirits today. Why? Well because it's Halloween and I love Halloween. An unnatural love perhaps for someone my age, with no kids and who is so easily terrified that I have to change the channel when an advertisement for a horror film comes on. I am just full of contradictions like that (it's what makes me so intriguing, mysterious and marvelous to be around - except when I'm whimpering during the jumpy-out bits of CSI). I wonder if it all comes from my obsession with fiction. Halloween is a night (or a week) when everyone gets to transform into something other than what they are. I love all the gypsies, pirates, hippies, nurses, vampires - no doubt we'll see a 'trampire' or two this year -, zombies, ghosts and dead brides that suddenly appear on the streets. I especially l...

Being originally Irish, I don't generally feel much culture shock after moving from the US to the UK. Driving on the left, the all important difference between asking for a 'ride' and getting a 'lift' home, the belief that a cup of tea can cure most ills, all this I can handle fairly deftly. What does my head in, though, is the Christmas mania of this country. Maybe it's because I live in London and it's nothing if not commercial, but I still think that October is too early for Christmas. No one needs a three-month Christmas season - that's a full quarter of the year being bombarded by McV****'s seasonal biscuit tins. I'm not a big celebrator of American Thanksgiving. ( you can read here what I was saying about it last year, though I might be coming 'round to the American way, slowly, year by year ) I think gratitude is a lovely reason for a holiday, but its glorification of the forced colonization of North America and mass murder of Native...